Thanks everybody for all your excellent work on the Cynefin project. All the contributions to this project can now be seen on NLW’s new website places.library.wales.

The map below shows how the maps have been cut and positioned (and warped) by our volunteers.

The full version of the above map including the detailed scans can be seen on the new website.

However, this is not the end of Cynefin. We will keep the website alive for a few more months. If you therefore see a few errors on the places.library.wales website, you can go to cynefin.wales and make corrections. These corrections will be loaded onto places.library.wales in September. Improvements are possible on the georeferencing, but it is not likely to be easy, it’s a matter of discovering individual points in areas with limited geographical information. Some corrections are also possible in the text, although again, this is not easy to find. See the forum for any problems which have been discovered. All corrections will be much appreciated.

There are other crowdsourcing volunteering opportunities available, have a look at the very different material – documents from Chartist court cases in the 1840s on chartist.cynefin.wales.

Another project which is nearing completion is the Wales’ Book of Rememberance where volunteers are transcribing the names of soldiers of Welsh origin, or serving in a Welsh battalion, who lost their lives in the Great War. They are also interested in getting help in their final push for completion.

The National Library of Wales will have new crowdsourcing platform with new projects starting in September. Contact volunteering@llgc.org.uk for more information about this.

This is the latest image 26/5/17 of the output of Cynefin georeferencing and clipping volunteers.
There is very little time remaining, in the first week in June Klokantech will take the data and produce the full merged tithe map of Wales. If you want to help make improvements, do this now!

(Tip, to see the full resolution you may need to right-click with your mouse and select “View Image”)
Some instructions are available on this post.

This is the latest image of the output of Cynefin georeferencing and clipping volunteers.
There is very little time remaining, in the first week in June Klokantech will take the data and produce the full merged tithe map of Wales. If you want to help make improvements, do this now!

(Tip, to see the full resolution you may need to right-click with your mouse and select “View Image”)
Some instructions are available on this post.

Those who have watched how the work on Cynefin is progressing will have noticed that the work is almost complete now, and the obvious question is how much time is left?
The answer is that we intend to work on this project until June. There are 800 pages left to transcribe, which sounds like a lot, but shouldn’t be a problem to a team who have already transcribed 27,600 pages. The other challenge is to review the pages. That is indicated by the green bars in the charts below.

Who was first to finish? Well in Anglesey there was an excellent team of volunteers in the local Record Office who worked regularly on their material. After they finished transcribing they were registered as reviewers and they completed that work as well. Close behind them was another excellent team of volunteers in Flintshire Record Office, who also completed their county a while ago, but have some reviewing to do. Volunteers are also free of course to help out in other counties, for which we are very grateful.

Cynefin’s main challenge now is to review the pages for the rest of Wales. People who are already volunteering on the Cynefin system are welcome to register as volunteers, if you would like to join contact cynefin@llgc.org.uk

When the work is completed it will be possible to see and search all of this data on the new Places of Wales Website which is currently being developed at the National Library of Wales. All the field names will also be transferred to the Welsh Place Name website which is run by the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. Users of all these websites will owe a debt of gratitude to the Cynefin volunteers for their excellent work.

The image output which was produced from Cynefin, based on the contribution of volunteers, will now be reproduced frequently.
This is the latest version.

It is already a great map but our volunteers are constantly improving it. Use this version to identify where improvements can be made.
(Tip, to see the full resolution you may need to right-click with your mouse and select “View Image”)
Some instructions are available on this post.

The image output which was produced from Cynefin, based on the contribution of volunteers, will now be reproduced frequently.
This is the latest version.

It is already a great map but our volunteers are constantly improving it. Use this version to identify where improvements can be made.
(Tip, to see the full resolution you may need to right-click with your mouse and select “View Image”)
Some instructions are available on this post.

This image is the result of thousands of hours of clipping and georeferencing by Cynefin volunteers.

This is the latest output and all known bugs have been resolved, only two or three maps remain to be added.
There are some gaps in the map, which can be seen if you zoom in. For example you can see some of the gaps in Brecknockshire here

Are they due to incomplete clipping or georeferencing? Can they be made to fit better? Or are the gaps simply land which wasn’t liable for tithes?
There are advanced features in Cynefin which can help us resolve this, so if you’re up for some serious georeferencing this is a great opportunity.
These guidelines may be useful, they are however advanced, only for people who already know how to georeference and clip on Cynefin

The Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine will be holding its first-ever Transcription Tuesday event on 17 January 2017.

They will be asking family historians to set some time aside to contribute towards one of several online transcription projects – even if it’s just for half an hour.

Members of staff from the WDYTYA? Magazine team have picked an initiative to support and will head up their own ‘team’ of transcribers, working remotely from home. Cynefin has been lucky enough to be picked as one of the initiatives to support by Andy Williams, Sales Executive for WDYTYA? Magazine. Andy explains his reason for choosing Cynefin; “Raised in Barry with parents from the Rhondda, Welsh family history is a project particularly close to my heart. As a born-and-bred Welshman, I chose this project for Transcription Tuesday to help researchers finding their Welsh lineage and aid in building such a vast database.” You can find a blog and a quick Cynefin tutorial by Andy here:

There’s over five months to go with Cynefin and it looks like Anglesey will be the first county to be completed.

The parishes seen on this map were drawn by Cynefin website volunteers who clipped the tithe maps to the shapes shown. You can see a few gaps where maps have not been loaded yet, in Llangefni and Gwredog. We expect these to be loaded this week.

There is some overlapping and gaps between the maps, and in most cases it’s possible to tidy this up by clipping or georeferencing, accurate goereferencing points near the boundaries of these maps would help.

However, there are some areas which don’t have tithe at all, and where there is no map either, but as you see above, these are relatively small areas. One is Bodewryd in the north of the island, where Lord Stanley arranged to pay tithe to himself, and avoided the need for a tithe map. There were also no tithes payable in Llannerch y Medd.

Anglesey apportionment documents are also almost complete, but there are a few individual pages which haven’t been transcribed: Beaumaris, Gwredog, Llanbabo, Llanfachreth (2nd page), Llanfigel, Llanfflewin, Llangaffo, Llangwyllog, Rhosmynach

An image has been released by the Cynefin project showing progress of how the historic tithe maps of Wales will be linked together to create a unified tithe map of Wales.

The image demonstrates the scale of the work involved in creating the complete tithe map, which will cover 95% of Wales. Over 1,200 separate maps have been conserved and digitised over the past two years. Once digitised the maps are placed online for volunteers to georeference and clip, in order to locate and define the boundary of each parish or township. The image shows just how much work has already been completed by volunteers, and how much is left to do.

The unified map will be accurately georeferenced in order to easily compare with other modern and historical mapping layers. Through the transcription work which volunteers are also doing online, the map will be fully searchable on a free online platform – it will be possible to search and locate land owners, land occupiers and field names from 1840s Wales at a touch of a button. It will also be possible to browse the map geographically and zoom in to see individual fields, as well as details such as dwellings and woodlands.

The image itself was produced by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, who have recently relocated at the National Library of Wales. This is the first time that a glimpse of the final unified map has been produced. It is now possible for volunteers to conveniently view which areas need further work. Anybody who wants to join in and help complete this incredibly detailed map of Wales from the 1840s is welcome to do so online on cynefin.wales.